Today’s News Will Be Remembered in 50 Yrs

[From the diaries by susanhu.] It’s the headline we’ve been dreading, yet knew was coming. WARMING HITS TIPPING POINT says the Guardian, because a vast part of Siberia, ” an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres – the size of France and Germany combined – has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.” {The Guardian)

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world’s largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying “tipping points” – delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth’s temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures. MORE BELOW:

Because of the feedback effect and the resulting release of methane gases, estimates of temperature rises over the next century will probably be revised upward as much as 25% just based on this single finding.

“When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it’s unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply,” said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

“This is a big deal because you can’t put the permafrost back once it’s gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing.”

Various climate scientists and ecologist have been warning that something like this was around the corner.  But the oil-drunk Bushheads, soaked in flatulent denial, are so far behind on the climate crisis that the public is also several steps from understanding the nature and dimension of the problem, and especially what must be done.

The argument about how aggressively to curb greenhouse gases that has absorbed everyone now becomes an argument primarily about responsibility to the far future.  Passing the tipping point in Siberia means that nothing anyone does now, not even a 95% reduction in carbon dioxide, is going to stop the melting.

The things that are going to have to be done first to deal with the inevitable aren’t even being discussed, because the Bushheads and their supporters deny it is happening.

Another danger we face is the public not understanding that cutting emissions, etc. won’t benefit them (except in terms of healthier air and water, of course)because it probably won’t affect the climate for a very long time, and so they could refuse to continue to switch to clean renewable and sustainable energy, thus condemning the future to even greater horrors, such as an end to the earth’s ability to sustain many of the life forms that characterize the planet. Or, as some describe it, the earth as we have known it since the dinosaurs.

Did I Write the John Kerry Slogan in 2004?

Hard to believe it’s a year after the Democratic convention.  It got me thinking about this again.

A little more than a year ago, when it was clear he was going to be the Democrat’s nominee, I got to thinking about a slogan, a phrase, that would sum up the case for John Kerry.  In early June I got it:

A Fresh Start.

I did more than think of it: I got it to the Kerry campaign at a high level in June, with a detailed memo on why those were the EXACTLY RIGHT WORDS.  The go-between was a prominent official in the Clinton White House.

In fact, in October John Kerry campaigned with this slogan (“A Fresh Start for America.”) It was on banners behind him, and on the front of the podium where he spoke during his last campaign swings.  It was singled out by Craig Crawford in the Congressional Quarterly:  “I could see the mood in the nods of agreement in an airport lounge recently as a television news clip showed Kerry saying the country needs `a fresh start.’  This could be the most powerful phrase in Kerry’s arsenal during the closing days.”

I never found out whether it was my memo that convinced them to consider it.  I never got credit for it, and needless to say, I didn’t make a cent on it.

But a year later, I’d really like to know just how my memo figured into the decision to use this slogan, if it did.

Details and the memo follow.
The memo I sent in June 2004 identifies me.  I hesitate to identify the Clinton official I sent it to, without his permission, but you would know his name.  We knew each other from college.  

It wasn’t until after the election that I asked him whether he had sent the memo on, and he said he had.  He said (in an email) he would try to find out what had happened to it, but he’s a busy guy.

But I didn’t just send the memo through him in June.  I sent it directly to someone at the kerry.com website, and to Mary Beth Cahill by mail.  I posted most of the memo on my blog on July 22.  At some point I posted a shorter version of the memo on the Kerry.com blog.

If I had simply come up with the words, it could be coincidence.  But read this rationale—I think I made a good case.

It was a thrill to see John Kerry campaign on those words.  But I find myself still wondering, should I get some credit?

But it also occurs to me now that it could work even better in 2008.

 So here is the original June 2004 memo:

William S. Kowinski is the author of THE MALLING OF AMERICA, a regular contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, an elected John Kerry delegate chosen to address the Humboldt County Democratic convention on Senator Kerry’s behalf before the CA primary

who earnestly entreats a few moments of your attention to the rationale for a THEME/TAG LINE that could help WIN THIS ELECTION.  

It’s just three words:

A FRESH START

Not just the concept, which is said and implied in many ways now, but the exact words.  There are many ways to say it, but most of the formulations have been overused or are too abstract: time for a change, a new day, a new America, etc.

 A FRESH START is fresh, it’s more concrete and action-oriented.  It has emotional resonance, connotations that are both exciting and warm.

Break it down:

A:   An indefinite article.  It doesn’t directly blame.  It doesn’t start an argument immediately by claiming too much (such as “this candidate is THE perfect answer to make everything better,” which puts a lot of people off.)

  FRESH: has good associations, to fresh food, fresh air—something brand new, untainted.  Fresh air is bracing, so it’s exciting.  Fresh bread is warm.  FRESH is POSITIVE, in its literal meaning and its emotional message.  But it also distinguishes from something that is not fresh, that’s old, that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  Something that’s fresh doesn’t directly imply a change from something that’s stale or decaying, but it is the desired alternative to something stale or decaying.  It has associations of health, of flavor, that it will FEEL GOOD.

START is an action word.  Start your engines!  It is exactly paired with FRESH in its music.  

The literal meaning of A FRESH START has everything to do with now and the future.  FRESH is immediate.  START implies action that goes on into the future.

But in this context, A FRESH START implies a repudiation of the past and of past mistakes, without actually saying it.  Lots of people have made up their minds that Bush has made serious mistakes.  Even if thing suddenly improve in Iraq, nothing changes the fact of the mistakes and the terrible costs of them.  This is a way of making Bush accountable for mistakes without being negative, or only negative.  

It is also less tied to “different directions” or different policies—for example, it will be argued that Kerry’s plan for Iraq is basically Bush’s new plan (even if based on Kerry’s ideas.)  But no one can argue that the assertion of “a different direction” is wrong because the direction isn’t really different—A FRESH START can in some cases mean simply a new person, without the baggage of the past.  

But it works equally well on issues (like health care) that are based on a new policy direction or different approaches.  And for those predisposed to want a different direction, and those who want Kerry to bring a different direction, they will read all of that into A FRESH START.    

And it will WORK no matter what happens in the future, because it implies a repudiation of the past: of the horror this administration has forced on us all, no matter how it seems to be turning out at the moment—the horror and shame of Iraq, the pain inflicted on the unemployed and those without health care, etc.

 A FRESH START appeals to the base: those who want nothing more than to get rid of Bush.  But it can also appeal to INDEPENDENTS READY TO JUMP who are troubled if not appalled, and who are almost ready to hold Bush accountable for mistakes, regardless of how they feel generally about his policies or his personality.  

But the real key is that it can also appeal to OTHER INDEPENDENTS AND EVEN REPUBLICANS who need a nudge to use the secrecy of their ballot to vote for A FRESH START, for somebody new, without the emotional turmoil of admitting they were wrong to back Bush, or without the appearance of being disloyal to their party or ideology or religious congregation.  

A FRESH START doesn’t require anyone to admit that they fault Bush specifically.  They might fault others in his administration.  They may not fault anyone—they just want all this bad stuff to go away, and they’re afraid that with Bush it could continue.  They don’t want to see the awful pictures and terrible headlines.  They want it all to be over, but they don’t want to appear disloyal to a president in wartime.  A FRESH START is unthreatening language.  It is optimistic, forward-looking, and very American.  

A FRESH START works even for those who don’t really believe that a change in administration will make much of a difference.  But at least it will be a change, a chance that things will be better.  Even when people are afraid to criticize, they can be persuaded by the sensible American idea that if things aren’t going well, it’s time to give somebody else a chance.

A FRESH START allows Kerry to be the candidate of change and hope without forcing him to take radical positions to prove it.

A FRESH START is a tag line to be used relentlessly until everyone knows it, until comedians are making jokes about it.  But it is also a concept around which the candidate can build positions, and can show his personality.  IT TURNS THE FACT THAT MANY AMERICANS DON’T KNOW KERRY INTO AN ADVANTAGE.  He’s new and therefore fresh, and imagery can reinforce this naturally by showing his family, his friends, his background—all new to the public.

 When FDR was first elected, Will Rogers commented that if he had simply burned the White House down, the country would have said, at least he got a fire started.  The electorate isn’t that desperate yet.  But there is a layer of something like desperation, and certainly deep dissatisfaction and disquiet, that is ready to be tapped.  How do you do it without forcing anyone to feel guilty?  How do you overcome the fear of change?  Just a nudge might do it, just three words: A FRESH START.    

Plame/Wilson Next Steps and Themes

My previous two diaries presented extensive excerpts from Friday’s congressional forum on the meaning and ramifications of the White House exposing the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.  

This much shorter diary outlines my selection of the themes that emerged I believe are most useful to exposing the truth of this affair, its relationship to Iraq, and how Democrats who voted for the war can retain credibility on this issue.  

The goal I have in mind is to focus this debate so that it directly leads to neutralizing the power of the neocons and others within the Bush administration who are simultaneously creating a police state in America while engaging in reckless violence in the world that also severely damages the U.S. future.

Crossposted at dkos.  

My specific aim here is to find the most succinct and effective themes.  That’s a creative process, and one that often takes some refining.  So this is a first step.  

The theme that runs through the testimony of  the witnesses–all with personal and extensive experience in the CIA, and often in other security agencies and law enforcement-was TRUST, and the violation of trust.  Some variation on the theme of trust, who can be trusted with our national security and with our future, I believe is central.

Republicans have traditionally won in the polls on this issue.  But Democrats can use this issue to begin to turn this around.  It may well be a potent issue for the next election cycle.  

But to make that case-that the Bush administration and the Republicans cannot be trusted—requires that this particular violation of trust be clearly articulated in two ways:

First, on principle.  The witnesses hammered at this point.  A covert agent being outed, however it happened, is a serious breach of trust that devastates this nation’s ability to gather intelligence, and it puts lives at risk.

Second, a direct connection to the war on terror.  This is perhaps the most potent point and it needs to be emphasized much more clearly than it has been.

Any covert agent being outed is a serious breach of trust that devastates this nation’s ability to gather intelligence in the war on terror.  

It is especially crucial (as witnesses noted) because human intelligence is indispensable in preventing terrorist attacks.  Terrorists don’t have missile bases and truck convoys to monitor from satellites.  The very dangerous person-to-person gathering of information is the most effective method in the war on terror, and recruiting people overseas to risk their lives in order to give the US the information it needs can easily be made impossible if the US can’t be trusted to protect those identities.

The failure here was not only to expose the identity of a covert agent.  It was and is the ongoing failure to find, banish and punish those responsible.  

This specific situation is even more serious, and more directly related to the war on terror, because of what Valerie Plame Wilson did.  She was a key part of an effort to learn of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons threats to the US.  There could not be a more essential intelligence operation than this.  And exposing her name, and the information that followed from that exposure, destroyed that particular effort.

A covert agent’s name, contained in a secret document, was exposed, for apparent political purposes.  For political purposes, the president has not banished or punished those responsible.  The theme here was best expressed by one of the witnesses on Friday, which I would restate as: In the Bush administration, politics trumps national security.

In short, this breach of trust, the exposure of a covert agent in the war on terror, must be positioned as a serious matter of national security.

This might be characterized as the “Plame” side of the issue.  The “Wilson” side is just as important, meaning the reason that a covert agent’s name was exposed was to attack the credibility of Joseph Wilson, with the goal of covering up the Bush administration’s deliberate deceptions that led America into a devastating war.

The Bush administration handling of the war in Iraq is very unpopular right now, and more than ever the American public is more open to the idea that they were deceived into it.

This is the key issue as it affects policy.  It is the issue that more than any other, except perhaps the basic issue of trust, that could and should bring down the Bush administration, at least to the extent of ridding it of dominance by the neocons and their agenda.

I will highlight just a few themes that a couple of Democrats sounded in their opening remarks at Friday’s forum.

First is on the scope of the scandal.  Americans, and probably much of the world, thinks of Watergate as the benchmark for a serious scandal that in that case brought down a president and his administration.  

This scandal is at least as serious, and at least in one very graphic way it is more serious.  The line that says this best was delivered by Rep. Jay Inslee, to open his remarks:

“Nobody died in Watergate.”

He  went on to say:
“And over 1,750 of our sons and daughters are dead in the sands of Iraq. And I have come here to show my respect for our intelligence covert agents and Foreign Service officers who risk their lives to get the truth to the American people.”

 Some believe that there is potential difficulty for some congressional Democrats in discussing Iraq, if they voted for the war.  That appeared to be a problem for John Kerry.  But those members of Congress have even more credibility on this issue than those who voted against the war, because the voters who supported the war can empathize with them and their outrage, IF the issue is expressed as:  We believed the president, and his administration lied to us.  They lied us into this war.

That was precisely the theme that Rep. Henry Waxman sounded in his opening remarks and later in the hearing.

And it is an issue deeply personal to me. One of the hardest votes that I cast was to authorize the war in Iraq. Like many others, I was torn. But in the end, I sided with the president because of the administration’s insistence that Iraq was on the verge of nuclear capability. Today, we know the truth. I was misled, as were the American people. And it was Valerie Plame Wilson’s husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who helped expose what really happened.”

Where do we go from here?  I believe Waxman also presented the theme for that goal: a full congressional investigation.  A relentless call for full congressional investigation, with people like Rove and Libby compelled to testify, would make it impossible for the mainstream media to ignore this issue.

Even the calls for those hearings, on the basis of NATIONAL SECURITY and BREACH OF TRUST and damaging the war on terror,  would elevate the issue to an appropriate level.  Democrats united in calling for the hearings would create the kind of conflict that news organizations are used to and understand.  And even given their corporate bias, they see ratings in covering conflict.

Highlights of Plame Hearing Part II

This is the second half of my summary with copious quotes of the Plame hearing on Friday.

At this point, all the ex-CIA members had testified except one.  The rest is selected from the questions and answers.

David McMichael, former CIA case officer and frequent critic of U.S. intelligence operations, spoke briefly.  After concurring with the previous speakers, he added: “And at bottom, I think what we are dealing with today, as Larry Johnson has pointed out, in the whole buildup to the current war in which we are, there has been, let us say, less than complete regard for the truth, for delivering that truth to the American people by the administration. And at bottom, I think that is what we are all concerned with.”

Larry Johnson was answering a question from Senator Dorgan when Dorgan interrupted him to find out from security whether in fact the building was being evacuated.  It wasn’t, but Johnson’s answer may have been lost in the shuffle.  But it was on point:

“This problem almost certainly damaged intelligence assets that were connected with providing the United States information about rogue states and terrorist organizations trying to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear material. And that goes to the very heart of some of the threats that we face today.”

In response to a question from Rep. Waxman, Marcinkowski emphasized that President Bush’s new standard of not taking action unless an aide is convicted of a crime was in itself a damaging message to those who might otherwise help U.S. intelligence.  

“You have to go out and build that trust. And the bottom line is since no action has been taken, they’re seeing nothing, they’re wondering what’s going on, evidently no one cares. That’s what it is. Because it is not a criminal standard; they know it just as well as anybody else. It’s a high ethical standard to operate in government; if nothing’s going on there, if we’re going to establish a criminal standard, we’re in trouble. And in the meantime, “Oh, by the way, we don’t care, because we’re not looking into it, no one got fired, no one went on administrative leave.” And the list goes on and on.Inaction itself sends the message — the wrong message.”

Col. Lang also spoke to the problems posed by not taking immediate and dramatic action to show that the U.S. keeps its confidences.  He referred to movie scenarios showing foreign agents being recruited through bribery and intimidation, commenting, “that’s all a lot of nonsense, in my opinion. In fact, all the really good recruitments I ever saw were done on the basis of this kind of deep, empathic relationship and very, very profound trust. And it has nothing to do with legality, legalisms. Nothing at all. This is a human phenomenon of deep relationships and trust.” Doing what has so far been done in this case, he concluded, damages the security of the United States.

Several of the Members of Congress concluded that this testimony revealed even to them that the problem is worse than they previously thought.  Rep. Slaughter asked Larry Johnson, “in all your years of experience, have you ever had anything like this where it appeared that someone from the White House had outed an agent of the intelligence agency?”

“No, ma’am,” Johnson replied. “It’s never happened. I mean, this is unprecedented.”

Could it have happened accidentally?  Rep. Slaughter asked if officials like Rove and Libby were briefed on the meaning of secrecy.

“If they’re given access to classified information, there is a briefing that they receive and there is nondisclosure agreements that they’re required to sign committing themselves not to disclose the information that’s put under their care,” Johnson replied.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) asked: “If you had a message for Congress then, how should we prevent something like this from ever happening again, what would be called for?”

“I say this as a currently registered Republican: I wish Howard Baker was back in the Senate,” Larry Johnson said. “I wish there was a Republican of some courage and conviction that would stand up and call the ugly dog the ugly dog that it is. But instead, you know, I watched last night, John McCain on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball,” making excuses, being an apologist. Where are these men and women over there with any integrity to stand up and speak out against this?”

“Look, let me just say something about this,” Col. Lang said. In the past, a junior officer in some setting who broke an intelligence person’s operational cover would be punished administratively. The mechanism is there for doing this. This is an unauthorized disclosure of classified information. And if you didn’t choose to deal with it yourself, as Marcinkowski said, you could get him punished. But the problem is, when you get to this kind of level, you know, things stop being unauthorized disclosures in reality and become press releases. And that has to — what has to be stopped. There has to be a way, in fact, to discipline people who are closer to the center of power. Otherwise, I suspect that the temptation to deal with your enemies in ways like this may be overwhelming for a number of people. And it’s a really despicable thing to do, really.”

Rep. Waxman asked several questions about GOP talking points.  Can you be covert and work at the CIA offices?

“…of course,you’re covert and you can be inside the CIA headquarters,” Marcinkowski said, ” because countries all over the world don’t have the capability like the former Soviet Union to put surveillance on the local areas here, those kinds of things, so there’s no harm to that person’s cover when they go back and forth out of the CIA facility. So it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. Of course, there’s covert people there.”

Asked about the talking point that suggests the White House did not leak Plame’s name but only confirmed it to reporters, Larry Johnson said: “Well, the 1982 law and Section A stipulates that anyone who provides, the phrase is “any information identifying.” So when you say “Joe Wilson’s wife,” that falls under that “any information identified,” because that allows you to identify Joe Wilson’s wife is a covert operator. And so, again, it’s — the sloppiness of the Republican National Committee — you know, apparently they didn’t even take time to read the law before they issued those talking points, because if they’d read the law, they’d recognize that, that was just complete utter fabrication on their part, that this was an out.”

Marcinkowski elaborated: if the press gets information, “They have to have it confirmed. If they’re not going to print it unless you get confirmation, doesn’t that, in fact, make the confirmation more important than the information?
Everybody understands that. So the confirmation is equally liable in this case, if not more so.

“If we go back to the original issue, it really goes to the heart of being in Iraq and being at war,” Rep. Waxman concluded. “It goes back to the essential evidence that President Bush put there before the country that convinced many of us that we should give him the power to go to war — the idea thatSa ddam Hussein was going to have nuclear capability because he was getting the uranium from Niger and that was one indication that they were moving along in developing a nuclear bomb. And, of course, that metaphor, I think it was Condoleezza Rice who used it, don’t let a smoking gun be a nuclear cloud — what a powerful metaphor.”

“So they manipulated the evidence that turned out to be not evidence at all, but based on a hoax. And that’s what Ambassador Wilson revealed. and that’s why they have such a venomous anger at him that they’re willing to jeopardize — his wife, obviously, they don’t care about — but our whole national security as a result.”

“Now, that seems to me the most disturbing aspect of all of this. There’s not just a Republican motive to gain an advantage, but an opportunity for them to
blur any responsibility or accountability for how we got into war and why we’re in Iraq now and what’s happening that goes on every day, and a difficult situation we have whether to leave or not to leave or when to leave, and how many more lives do we throw away if we’re there for some ill-conceived reason or now must sacrifice because our national stature and reputation is on the line and we can’t just walk away. As Secretary Powell said, because we broke it, we own it. Partisan politics should stop when you’ve got a war going on.”

“But it seems to me that the basic tenet of patriotism is not to mouth the words “We support our troops,” “We support America,” but to really be there to support all of the people who are on the line for our country.”

In an exchange with Rep. Inslee, Col. Lang added this:

“I mean, look, there’s a real intimidation factor out there. It would be one thing if the incident and the outing of Valerie Plame was isolated and it was unique. But when you go back and you look at the efforts of Undersecretary Bolton at the Department of State, where he tried to fire both an intelligence analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, as well as remove a senior intelligence officer at the National Intelligence Council because he said that he had doubts about that individual – this intimidation process of the intelligence community is out there and it’s had a chilling effect.”

Referring to the open letter sent to the congressional leadership about the Plame affair, Lang said,  “There are two individuals who declined to put their name to the letter that we sent to Congress because those individuals still do work with the Central Intelligence Agency. And one of the individuals, in particular, had received some direct questioning and pressure about, “Why are you signing or even thinking about signing such a letter?” So the intimidation factor is out there.”

Highlights of Plame Hearing Part I

For those who didn’t see Friday’s Plame hearing which featured testimony by ex-CIA members, this is my summary with lots of quotes.  I saw most of the hearing on C-Span and all of the quotations are from the transcript, which you can find in full here:

democrats.reform.house.gov

The transcript runs to more than 50 pages, so even this summary is lengthy.  In fact, I’ve divided it in two parts.

However, if I were writing a page one story on this, I would highlight this single quote, from former CIA operations officer Jim Marcinkowski:” Each time the leader of a political party opens his mouth in public to deflect responsibility, the word overseas is loud and clear: Politics in this country does, in fact, trump national security.”

This was an unofficial forum assembled on Friday morning, July 22, by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), co-chaired by Dorgan and Congressman Henry Waxman.

After Dorgan’s brief introduction, Senator Charles Schumer of New York spoke, emphasizing that the day after Valerie Plame was named in Robert Novak’s column, he began calling CIA officials, including then-Director George Tenet, all of whom were angry, and it was Tenet who strongly requested that the Justice Department launch an investigation into the identity of the person who leaked Plame’s name.

Schumer’s point was this: “So the origins of this investigation do not come from anybody on the political side, they come from the CIA itself, which I think, from the very highest level down to the agent functioning and helping our country out there in the field, there was fury that this had happened.”

Schumer called for the security clearance of Karl Rove and Lawrence “Scooter” Libby (v.p. Cheney’s chief of staff) to be revoked, and a new internal investigation by the White House.  Also “that the president should reiterate his commitment that anyone who was involved in the leak, not simply that anyone who meets that narrow and high criminal standard, be fired.”

Representative Henry Waxman spoke next. “The disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s identity as an undercover CIA agent is indefensible on many levels. It was an indefensible betrayal of her and her family. It was an indefensible affront to the men and women who are on the front lines of defending America. And it was an indefensible breach of our national security.”

He then related the case directly to the Iraq war.

“And it is an issue deeply personal to me. One of the hardest votes that I cast was to authorize the war in Iraq. Like many others, I was torn. But in the end, I sided with the president because of the administration’s insistence that Iraq was on the verge of nuclear capability. Today, we know the truth. I was misled, as were the American people. And it was Valerie Plame Wilson’s husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who helped expose what really happened.”

“Well, today’s New York Times fills in another piece of the puzzle,” Waxman continued.”In October 2002, CIA Director George Tenet personally called the deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, to stop President Bush from using the uranium claim in his speech in Cincinnati. Around the same time, the CIA sent the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, a memo warning her not to rely on the uranium evidence.”

He indicated (as did others later) that this contradicts claims that the Bush White House did not know the claim about Niger and uranium was false before the State of the Union.

In speaking about accountability for the leak, Waxman said, “There is an executive order — Executive Order 12958 — that governs protection of national security information. Under this executive order, the White House has an affirmative obligation to take appropriate and prompt corrective action to address the leaks of classified information.”

“There’s a special standard for Karl Rove: There will be no questions asked and no accountability,” Waxman observed.  Then he zeroed in on another action that needs to be taken:  a full congressional inquiry.  

“Not only is the president ignoring his obligation, but Congress is refusing to do its job.” Waxman said. “There is a simple way to get to the bottom of this scandal: The Republican Congress can hold a hearing as early as next week with Mr. Rove. For the sake of all the men and women who are defending America’s freedom, Republicans in Congress should join us in asking questions and getting answers for the American people.”

“They have refused to hold these hearings, and that is why we’re doing what we can today, but we can’t subpoena Karl Rove or Scooter Libby, and they would refuse to come to appear before us. They would have to come if Congress did its job as a separate and independent branch of government and exercised its oversight responsibility for the protection our nation.”

After Representative John Conyers asked that his opening remarks be entered into the record,  Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) spoke about the Plame matter in the context of other Bush administration abuses.

She concluded, “The deepening scandal surrounding the leaked identity of covert CIA operative Valerie
Plame is perhaps the most poignant example of this today. At its worst, treason was committed by high-ranking White House officials. At its best, we have witnessed a startling abuse of power by this administration, one which has seriously compromised our national security, jeopardized the war on terror and placed the lives of a covert CIA operative and her contacts in danger; all of what so far appears to be a reprehensible act of political retribution.”

She added her own questions about the extent of this act:

“Aside from Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Colin Powell and Ari Fleischer, who else in the White House had access to the classified memo?”

“Given that so many of the president’s men had access to the memo, it is incumbent upon Congress, the special prosecutor and the American people to ask the following difficult question: What did President Bush know about the Valerie Plame leak and when did he know it?

Is it possible that he and Vice President Cheney, along with most of Bush’s inner circle, could have known about this plot to exact retribution on Ambassador Wilson at theex pense of national security?

Is it possible that President Bush or Vice President Cheney could have been involved themselves?

These are tough, serious questions that must be addressed.”

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) was equally pointed:

“Nobody died in Watergate. And over 1,750 of our sons and daughters are dead in the sands of Iraq. And I have come here to show my respect for our intelligence covert agents and Foreign Service officers who risk their lives to get the truth to the American people.”

He then told a story about Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson’s husband, whose New York Times oped piece set off this chain of events.  

“Ambassador Joe Wilson is the guy recommended and commendated by the first President Bush as the last American officer in Baghdad in the first Persian Gulf War. When Saddam Hussein threatened to kill any American officer who took Americans out of Iraq because he wanted to keep them hostage, Saddam Hussein heard from Joe Wilson, who said, “You can come get me first and put a noose around my neck, because I’m taking my people home.” And he took everybody home safely from Baghdad before the beginning of the Persian Gulf War and he was commended for that by the first President Bush. The second President Bush was not so honorable in the treatment of Ambassador Joe Wilson in his administration as the first President Bush.”

“They took on the wrong fellow when they tried to intimidate Joe Wilson,” Inslee concluded.

Senator Dorgan  then asked the panel before him for their statements.  Larry Johnson had introduced Colonel Patrick Lang as his mentor, and Senator Dorgan added more of his resume: retired senior officer of U.S. military intelligence, Vietnam veteran, a Middle East specialist.

Lang spoke of the gathering of intelligence from individuals (so-called human intelligence, or HUMINT) as especially crucial in stopping terrorists, for they offer few opportunities for other kinds of surveillance—they have no missile silos to photograph from satellites, etc.  Speaking of human intelligence he said,  “it is a peculiarity of this kind of war that that is exactly the kind of intelligence that you have to have. “He suggested the U.S. hasn’t done very well in that area so far, but its this area of intelligence that the Plame outing has directly damaged.  He called it “an assault on the ability of the United States” to perform human intelligence.

“Why would that be? It’s because HUMINT is about human beings. It’s about one person, an American person, a case officer in the parlance of the trade, causing some foreign person to trust him enough and to trust his unit and to trust the United States enough to put his life, his fortune and, indeed, his sacred honor in many cases into the hands of this case officer and the American intelligence unit that stands behind this case officer.”

Lang was highly persuasive in talking about the reality of what human intelligence gathering means.  He even gave it a religious dimension.

“It’s all about trust; it’s completely about trust. It’s about — I happen to have done a good deal of this kind of work in my life. And the moment in which some person, whether he’s an ambassador or a Montagnard in the hills of Vietnam with filed teeth, decides that he’s going to trust you enough so that he’s going to believe that you will protect him in every way in doing what he is doing, which is extremely dangerous to him and his family and to everyone else, is a magic moment, indeed. It’s almost sacramental in a lot of ways, really.

And it imposes on the case officer and the unit behind him in the United States the kind of obligations that are as serious in some ways as the seal of the confessional, really. I mean, I’m a Catholic; I understand exactly what that means.”

“And the obligation to protect this person is absolute, in fact. And it’s not only absolute from the point of view of morality; it’s absolute from the point of view of practicality as well, because if within a practicing clandestine intelligence unit the case officers believe that their superiors will not protect the identity of their sources or their own identity, in fact, in doing things which are dangerous and difficult, then a, kind of, circle of doubt begins to spread, like throwing a rock into the water.

And it spreads in such a way so that if an intelligence service that belongs to a particular country comes to be thought generally in the world as an organization that does not protect its own, does not protect its foreign assets, then the obvious is true in that people are not going to accept recruitment, are not going to work for you. And the smarter they are, the better placed they are, the better educated they are, the less likely they are to accept recruitment and to work for you if they believe that you are not going to fight in the last ditch to protect their identities. And so, this is all completely about trust.”

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson spoke next.  His remarks, the basis for his radio address on Saturday, are more widely reproduced, so I will refer to only a few points here.  He endorsed everything Lang said, and concentrated on refuting Republican talking points impugning Valerie Plame and belittling her status as a covert agent.

He referred to “one of the most malicious, disingenuous smear campaigns, not only of Ambassador Wilson, who can publicly defend himself, but of Valerie Plame his wife, who is still an officer at the Central Intelligence Agency and is unable to speak out publicly, is unable to defend herself and to correct the record.”

One element of Johnson’s testimony that no one else addressed was on the rationale for the GOP charge that Plame sent Wilson to Niger in order to embarrass the White House.  He and others detailed how the chain of command at CIA and Plame’s job meant that she had no power to send anyone to do anything, but he also said this about the alleged political motive:

“Now, apart from the fact that in February of 2002, when Valerie allegedly sent Joe Wilson on this mission, at that time the administration did not have a clear, publicly defined position stipulating that, in fact, Iraq was selling uranium or trying to acquire uranium from Niger. So it mystifies me how a low-level case officer could on her own discern what the administration’s policy subsequently would be so she could put in place this dastardly scheme to send her husband to Niger to find out that that was false so that then she could embarrass the administration a year and a half later. That is laughable.”

The next speaker was Jim Marcinkowski, who earlier had been identified as being from Rep. John Conyers’ district in Michigan, but he indicated that Conyer might not want to claim him as he had once been the Michigan president of the Young Republicans.

Marcinkowski had a rich and varied background in both intelligence (working at different times for the CIA and FBI) and in law enforcement, as a prosecutor and defense attorney.  

His testimony got off to an uncertain start but once he got rolling, it became clear what he was trying to do.  He was demonstrating how the Plame outing looked both to ordinary Americans, and to people overseas, especially those the U.S. might want to recruit to aid in gathering national security information.  

“The exposure of Valerie Plame by anyone in the White House is the same as a local police chief announcing to the media the identity of his undercover officers. It’s thatvsimple; everybody gets that. In both cases, the ability of the officer to operate is destroyed. But there is also an added dimension. An informant in a major sophisticated crime network or a CIA asset working in a foreign government is exposed they have a rather good chance of losing more than just their ability to operate.”

Foreign nationals aren’t going to pay attention to the ins and outs of the American legal system, he asserted.  They are just going to see that the U.S. doesn’t protect its agents, and when one is exposed, no one is held accountable.

“So we’re left with one fundamental truth: The U.S. government exposed the identity of a covert operative. I’m not going convinced that the toothpaste, at this point, can be put back into the tube. Great damage has been done, and that damage has been increasing every single day for more than two years.

“The problem with a refusal to accept responsibility by senior government officials is ongoing, causes greater damage to our national security as well as our ability to collect human intelligence. But the problem of inaction by the government lies not only with government officials, but also with the media, the commentators and other apologists who have no clue as to the workings of the intelligence community.”

“Each time the leader of a political party opens his mouth in public to deflect responsibility,the word overseas is loud and clear: Politics in this country does, in fact, trump national security.”

“Each time the political machine made up of prime-time patriots and partisan ninnies display their ignorance by deriding Valerie Plame as a mere paper pusher or belittling the varying degrees of cover used to protect our officers or continuing to play partisan politics with our national security, it’s a disservice to this country.”

“By ridiculing, for example, the degree of cover or the use of post office boxes, you lessen the confidence that foreign nationals place in our covert capabilities, especially when they’re involved in a community of intelligence collection, they know how these things work. They know how they’re used. So you may fool the American public by distracting minutia but you’re not doing it for people overseas. They know better.”

There’s a very simple message here: Before you shine up your American flag lapel pin and fix your patriotism to your sleeve, think about what impact your actions are going to have on the security to the American people; think about whether your partisan obfuscation is creating confidence in the United States in general, in the CIA in particular.”

He addressed what should have been done.

 “Those who take pride in their political ability to divert the issue from the fundamentalt ruth ought to be prepared to take their share of responsibility for the continuing damage done to our national security. When this unprecedented act first occurred, the president could have immediately demanded the resignation of all persons even tangentially involved. Or at a minimum, he could have suspended the security clearances of those persons and placed them on administrative leave.  Such methods are routine across the country in every police department, and every American citizen understands that.”

Welcome to the One False Church!

Welcome to the One False Church.  Many if not implicitly all those other churches and religions claim to be the one, the only truth.  The Catholics: the One True Church© from way back.  The various Evangelical/Fundamentalist Churches, sects and subsects (nothing succeeds like subsects) all claim sole proprietorship of the truth.

So how do you know, how do you really know?  You’re not choosing a toothpaste here, this is your soul.  So why not choose certainty?  You may never know which is the true church, but you can be completely confident that this is the False Church.

Everything about this belief system is guaranteed false.  Our version of the Bible (soon to be Revealed right here) is completely bogus.  Our cosmological explanation of life, the universe and everything: all false.  Our rules and regs, our Dogma and Patrimony Show, all 100% bullshit.  All our names for the Almighty—totally wrong, you’ll never get Him/Her/Them/Whatever/ on your cell.  Actually, even these statements are utterly without merit.

And I, the self-appointed Pope George-Ringo I, otherwise known as the Perky Pontiff, will guide you through the labyrinthine, yet perfectly simplistic, paths to the Eternal Falsehood, with plenty of pompous yet empty meanderings, bold lies, skillful deceptions, key inaccuracies, plus assorted minor deceits, half-truths, phoniness, misdirection, calumny, meaningless balderdash, random mendacity, and holy nonsense along the way, the False and the Twilight Zone.

Oh, and the maps are worthless as well.

Our theological arguments are known throughout the world for being dependably dependent on outrageously bad logic and complex but (rest assured) circular reasoning, relentless and out of context misquotation, distorted descriptions and insupportable conclusions, and such time-honored rhetorical devices of deceit as ad hominem attacks, poisoning the well, selectively distorted statistics,  unsupported assertions masked as facts, deceptive and non-existent sources, serial name-calling, and referencing well known statements that were false in the first place.  In other words, truly false—and proud of it.

The One False Church: in good times and bad, it’s comforting to know you’re wrong, every damned time.

Stay tuned for more elaborate fabrications.  In the meantime, remember: The One False Church: Falsehoods You Can Count On.  

“Everything is folly but folly itself.” Giacomo Leopardi